“Good fences make good neighbors” is the oft remembered and quoted line from Mending Wall, by Robert Frost. Frost seeks to explore human nature, and how we are a fallen creature prone to both order and the reduction of order when we grow suspicious of its purpose or creators. There is contradiction in the idea that as humans we seek order, yet often lash out at attempts to create and maintain it. The often overlooked difference that the left and right in America have with each other is that they don’t share a common understanding of what makes good order.
As an example, Republicans under Trump felt that a continual border wall would make a good physical barrier and bring order to the existing problem of human, weapon, and drug trafficking. The Democrats who often call for open borders, tend to oppose not concrete walls, but the Republicans understanding of the nature of boundaries. On a personal level many Democrats have no issue placing fences around their property or living behind the walls of a gated neighborhood. They view this as a way to protect their individual sovereignty when at home, even if they don’t think of it in that context. They may only be looking for a safe neighborhood for their kids to play and grow up in. Those on the Right view the lefts dismissal of national borders and acceptance of personal borders as fundamentally hypocritical. There is a divide between the two as to the nature of boundaries.
This same argument about what makes a good fence or barrier is carried over when we examine the fundamental difference the American Right and Left have when speaking of the Constitution and even Society as a whole. The American Right tends to view the Constitution as a border between the People and Government, and one that tends to be limiting in what it allows government to do. The modern American Left tends to view the Constitution as a border between Government and the People, and one that tends to be limiting in what it allows people to do. One view keeps the government out, the other keeps the people out. It’s all about how a person views the nature of boundaries. Are we keeping the People out, or the Government out? Or are we keeping the People in? Or are we keeping the Government in? They are all different understandings of why the Constitution exists, and the functions it performs and allows for, and all four understandings will bring about a drastically different reading of each section of the document.
Yesterday, President Biden went on record as saying “If you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.” As person who views the Constitution as a boundary between the People and Government, I see this as a not so veiled threat against the rights and lives of citizens, who have constructed a border (the Constitution) to keep government out. This means keeping them away from our Bill of Rights and the Second Amendment. If someone were to make the statement “If you come to rob my house, you better come armed” you would rightly think that the person making the statement is themselves armed and prepared to utilize their weapons against the intruder. This is the same basic statement made by Biden. He views the people as the outsider that could potentially harm the government, and thus is well within his rights as Executive to use arms against the people to maintain the government. The people must remain on their side of the border, so that the government may remain insulated against them on its side. This tends to be how the left interpreted yesterdays comments.
This doesn’t even begin to address the idea that no government retains the right to govern once it begins to bomb its own citizens, not to even speak of nuking them. At the point there is no border between the People and the Government. The wall has come down, the Constitution gone.
I tend to be of the mind that people are basically born benevolent creatures subject to actions of peace or actions of evil depending upon situation and circumstance. This means that individuals, all individuals, are capable of sin and disorder, and thus walls are needed to ensure we can live together within the structure of society. But we have lost the common understanding of the nature of those boundaries. The fallen nature of man will always resist both the disorder that exists within the world, and the order that is created to constrain it’s natural dangers. Walls are needed to keep the peace. We must work on coming to a common understanding of why we have the fences that we do in our society, and in doing so we must also take the time to mend these fences if they are to function in their intended capacities. When the nature of fences become unclear, the sin that resides within human nature will naturally work to exploit this ambiguity.
As Frost asked so playfully of his neighbor as to whether they were “walling in or walling out”, we too must do the same. Good fences make good neighbors, so long as we understand the purpose of the fence.
CulturalHusbandry, 1776/2021